diff --git a/intl/french.h b/intl/french.h
index 81f59bd623..6edf61e1db 100644
--- a/intl/french.h
+++ b/intl/french.h
@@ -17,6 +17,15 @@
 #ifndef __INTL_FRENCH_H
 #define __INTL_FRENCH_H
 
+/* IMPORTANT:
+ * For non-english characters to work without proper unicode support,
+ * we need this file to be encoded in ISO 8859-1 (Latin1), not UTF-8.
+ * If you save this file as UTF-8, you'll break non-english characters
+ * (e.g. German "Umlauts" and Portugese diacritics).
+ */
+/* DO NOT REMOVE THIS. If it causes build failure, it's because you saved the file as UTF-8. Read the above comment. */
+extern const char force_iso_8859_1[sizeof("àèéìòù")==6+1 ? 1 : -1];
+
 #define RETRO_LBL_JOYPAD_B "Bouton RetroPad B"
 #define RETRO_LBL_JOYPAD_Y "Bouton RetroPad Y"
 #define RETRO_LBL_JOYPAD_SELECT "Bouton RetroPad Select"
diff --git a/intl/russian.h b/intl/russian.h
index bd85181b3c..36b841b2d0 100644
--- a/intl/russian.h
+++ b/intl/russian.h
@@ -17,6 +17,8 @@
 #ifndef __INTL_RUSSIAN_H
 #define __INTL_RUSSIAN_H
 
+/* lack of force_iso_8859_1 is intentional - ISO-8859-1 does not contain the Cyrillic characters */
+
 #define RETRO_LBL_JOYPAD_B "RetroPad, кнопка B"
 #define RETRO_LBL_JOYPAD_Y "RetroPad, кнопка Y"
 #define RETRO_LBL_JOYPAD_SELECT "RetroPad, кнопка Select"
diff --git a/intl/spanish.h b/intl/spanish.h
index d5a478a41b..aecce62a4c 100644
--- a/intl/spanish.h
+++ b/intl/spanish.h
@@ -17,6 +17,15 @@
 #ifndef __INTL_SPANISH_H
 #define __INTL_SPANISH_H
 
+/* IMPORTANT:
+ * For non-english characters to work without proper unicode support,
+ * we need this file to be encoded in ISO 8859-1 (Latin1), not UTF-8.
+ * If you save this file as UTF-8, you'll break non-english characters
+ * (e.g. German "Umlauts" and Portugese diacritics).
+ */
+/* DO NOT REMOVE THIS. If it causes build failure, it's because you saved the file as UTF-8. Read the above comment. */
+extern const char force_iso_8859_1[sizeof("àèéìòù")==6+1 ? 1 : -1];
+
 #define RETRO_LBL_JOYPAD_B "Botón B RetroPad"
 #define RETRO_LBL_JOYPAD_Y "Botón Y RetroPad"
 #define RETRO_LBL_JOYPAD_SELECT "Botón Select RetroPad"